In Memoriam - An Unus Annus Fanfiction

03.05 -05/03 Professional fetish scientists rank the best/worst fetishes of 2020

A knock on the door freed Lixian from the seemingly endless night. He had watched the sun rise over the rooftops through the dirty window. It filled him with many emotions he couldn't quite find the words for, but one he could name. Luís was tired. Not in a 'Oh, I haven't slept well' kind of way, no, his current mood was more akin to 'I will bite your face off if you speak too loud'.
But at least the detective was here now, and in his hands, Lixians savior. Coffee, hot and black, with more added shots than healthy for any adult human. Not that he would care about that after tonight.

»Didn't get much rest either, huh?« The detective asked while Luís gently blew the steam off the top of the coffee. »Same 'ere. Saw more freaks in my dreams than you'd see goons around a stack of marked cards and dinchers,« He pulled his laptop out of its case, »But at least I crabbed something about Fischbachs box job in the museum. Had to crawl through a whole bunch'a bunk, but then II found something interesting.« He turned the screen towards Lixian. »I know it ain't a lot, but that thing he glaumed is called a 'fetish'.«
Luís looked up from his coffee. »A what now?« The detective barked a laugh. »Not that kinda fetish, ya egg. It's a dingus used for magic stuffs, if ya catch my drift. And if it was in a museum, it's probably of the ancient-and-powerful type.«
    »A magic artifact?« At this point, Luís wasn't even surprised anymore. Too much strange things haf happened lately for him to be worried about wheter or not magic could be a think. If there's one thing he had learned, if Mark was involved, everything was possible.

»But that ain't all,« the detective continued. »Remember the fella that was with him? It's like that chump got some sort of guardian angel. Cams picked up no face, no leads, nothin'. Plain clothes, plain shoes, plain fella. Ya can't even see his hair color. Now, I thought that was strange. Strange like a cat running away from the fish, ya know? So I dug a bit, and guess what?« The vid's been tampered with. Stuff's been cut, like the fingers of a gamblin' addict. Its- Are you still listening?«
   »Hm?« Luís raised his head. »Oh, yeah. The footage has been cut, right?« If he was honest, he had only listened with half an ear. His mind, woken by the caffeine, had wandered back to the note he found on his pillow yesternight. Meet me next next week at Cracker Barrel. You got it all wrong. It wasn't hard to guess who the message came from. But the implications where terrifying. Mark knew what they were doing, maybe some of it, maybe all of it. Regarding the second part, he had no idea how to react to that. You got it all wrong. Was it an honest offer of conversation, or a warning? Perhaps even a trap? How did Mark even know he was digging around in his past?
He loojed at the detective, who was still talking about the mysterious second man. Could he even trust him? After all, he barely knew anything about this man, and he had popped up seemingly out of nowhere as soon as Luís had started getting serious with his research.

For a moment, he wondered if he should tell him about the paper, but decided against it. It didn't make sense of course, if the detective worked with Mark he'd know about it anyways, but if he didn't, he'd probably sink his teeth into the new lead like a rabid dog.
»So, I'll try and dig up some stuff about Mr. Invisible, and you try to figure out what the exactly they grabbed, aight?«
     Lixian, having missed the last few sentences, reacted quickly. »Wait, how am I supposed to do that?«
    »You'll figure something out. Ya look like the fella that's into museums, I'm sure ya can ask around without drawin too many eyes to you.«

The detective emptied the rest of his coffe with a single swing, and closed the door on his way out. The sudden silence weighed almost as heavy as the small folded piece of paper in Lixians pocket.